Carbon-carbon composites have been proposed for brake shoes, for disc-type brakes on aircraft, for rocket engines, rotary engine seals, and for similar applications where the composite must possess the capability of withstanding extreme temperatures and pressures. Properties such as high specific shear strength and impact strength are necessary for such applications. For such purposes, carbon composites prepared from carbon or graphite fibers and a carbonaceous pitch are well known. These composites are particularly well suited as refractory materials but possess certain deficiencies of shear strength and impact strength to withstand the stress occurring in high temperature friction devices as for example brake shoes. The preparation of such carbon-based refractories is accomplished by admixing a carbonizable resin or a pitch from petroleum, coal tar, ethylene tar, or polyvinyl chloride tar sources or like pitches with carbon fibers and carbonizing and graphitizing the resulting body. Due to deformation of the body caused by softening of the pitch at high temperatures, the carbonization is carried out under physical constraint. Attempts to prevent this deformation by surface oxidation of the pitch prior to carbonization cause the formation of a non-graphitizable glassy carbon during the carbonization process. These glassy carbon structures do not possess the required physical properties for high temperature refractories. The use of mixtures of pitch and pitch-like materials with thermosetting resins necessary to provide a rigid body is such that void-free graphitizable carbon-carbon bodies have been difficult to fabricate.